Friday, November 4, 2016

This is just so troubling, while supporting a cause that's so right. In the presidential election of a hundred years ago, women still did not have the vote in most states. With the election in the news, it was a good opportunity to push yet again for women's suffrage. Good idea--long overdue. But the message this 1916 popular song conveys is not exactly liberating.

The woman's role is clearly defined in the image: at home, raising the family, smiling to the world. The rhetoric of the chorus then places the woman as a man's helpmate and little more:

She's good enough to love you and adore you,
She's good enough to bear your troubles for you;
And if your tears were falling today,
Nobody else would kiss them away.
She's good enough to warm your heart with kisses
When you are lonesome and blue,
She's good enough to be your baby's mother
And she good enough to vote with you!

A hundred years later, Americans have their first opportunity to vote for a woman as a major party candidate. Progress for sure. But Lord knows what we will think a hundred years from now about the rhetoric of this campaign season.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

It is the Day of the Dead, perfect for highlighting the recent acquisition of Imagines mortis (Cologne: Apud haeredes Arnoldi Birckmanni, 1557). It will warm your heart on a gray November day. The fifty-three woodcuts are based on Hans Holbein's famous Dance of Death series, but here are presented more in the form of an emblem book with each image captioned with a verse. Death shows no favorites, and comes for all: some seem quite willing to go, while others fight.

This is also a good opportunity to let you know about an upcoming conference that the Library is co-sponsoring: Lives and Afterlives in the Middle Ages: The 43rd Annual New England Medieval Conference on November 19th,. We will have an exhibit with more medieval and early modern death later this month.